A real treat was had by all in the village of Uffculme on Wednesday evening when, on the invitation of Uffculme Library Friends, the remarkable Devon author Katharine Lowrie arrived to speak and read extracts from her new book Running South America with my Husband and other animals.

Katharine is the first, and only, woman in the world to have run the entire length of South America and, accompanied by her husband David, they became the first people to run the 6,504-mile length of the continent unsupported. They drew admiration from HRH Prince Charles: “I am hugely impressed that you are undertaking such a gruelling and challenging run for such a vitally important cause and I pray you will not have too many blisters, mosquito bites and other travel scars by the time you return from such an extraordinary marathon (…) I send you both my kindness good wishes and admiration”.

Katharine is a warm and enthusiastic character and a terrific speaker. She captivated her audience from the word go and, together with her audio visual presentation, we learnt how the couple ran from the freezing south to the tropical north, which entailed sleeping rough by the side of the road, and towing their gear in a home-made rickshaw.

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Her description and imagery of swimming glacial rivers in winter near the start of the run was particularly chilling for the audience and one wonders how they managed to continue after this. Their epic adventure took them through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela. Along the route they took in awe-inspiring scenery, the biggest rainforest on earth, a multitude of astounding wildlife, and the generosity of local people en route. However, such an adventure is also fraught with danger and the couple had to overcome injuries, illnesses, not to mention threats to their lives in some of the most crime-ridden areas of the world.

By the time Katharine and David flopped into the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of Venezuela they had run the equivalent of 250 marathons and had raised thousands of pounds for conservation.

The Uffculme audience really took to Katharine and her remarkable story of personal endurance, so much so that she sold all the copies of the book that she’d brought along with her, with additional orders having to be placed from an unlucky few at the back of the queue.